Woodruff's World
African American painter Hale Woodruff was born on this day in 1900.
Woodruff painted a number of landscapes inspired by scenes near his Atlanta home during the 1930s. Here, two groups of trees form parentheses around a large gnarled oak; serpentine limbs and leafy boughs are visually and psychologically related to its curvilinear neighbors. The twill-like brushstrokes echo the techniques of Cezanne while the swirling masses of color recall the emotionalism of Van Gogh's late landscapes. Woodruff undoubtedly became familiar with the works of these modern European masters during his Paris sojourn, yet this landscape has a decidedly original and American flavor.
Woodruff said about his Georgia landscapes, "The rugged terrain of southern France now became the soft, rich hillsides of red clay, swaying pines and ... the eroded soil, abandoned and lost."
Source: Regenia A. Perry. Free within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in Association with Pomegranate Art Books, 1992).
Pictured: Hale Woodruff, 1900–1980, Georgia Landscape, about 1934–1935, oil, 21 1/8 x 25 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred T. Morris, Jr.
African American painter Hale Woodruff was born on this day in 1900.
Woodruff painted a number of landscapes inspired by scenes near his Atlanta home during the 1930s. Here, two groups of trees form parentheses around a large gnarled oak; serpentine limbs and leafy boughs are visually and psychologically related to its curvilinear neighbors. The twill-like brushstrokes echo the techniques of Cezanne while the swirling masses of color recall the emotionalism of Van Gogh's late landscapes. Woodruff undoubtedly became familiar with the works of these modern European masters during his Paris sojourn, yet this landscape has a decidedly original and American flavor.